Relativity
by Endoh
Summary: Happiness, as with time, is relative. So when Sasuke receives a second chance to gain the happiness he never had, can he make things right for himself, for the woman who gave him his opportunity, and for the world he nearly obliterated? SasuSaku


"I came from a different time, you see. The time I came from was a horrifying place: the world was at war, as it is now; innocent people were dying all the days, as they are now; entire villages were removed from the face of the earth, as they are now. But everything was _so_ much worse than now! Imagine that! A time worse than the present!"

Beta(s) for this chapter: Nobody, as of yet. Application info is available on my profile.

Sasuke x Sakura

Rating: Teen

Happiness, as with time, is relative. So when Sasuke receives a second chance to gain the happiness he never had, can he make things right for himself, for the woman who gave him his opportunity, and for the world he nearly obliterated?

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Hello, hello. For those of you who have read some of my other stories, you know this is my first t-rated chaptered fic. Normally, my stories are quite m-rated, but this one has the only plot I know I can deliver in the way my readers have become accustomed to while remaining at the teen rating. That being said, this could be an intense t-rated fic. I'm going to list of a few things you will see (in moderation) that may make you want to reconsider reading this story: limited amounts of cursing; mild depictions of gore; attempted suicide; deep delves into all types of sorrow, death, and other such things. Oh, and romantic scenes. (; If you want the hardcore 'romance' (cough…), go read some of my other stories. This one, I'm trying to keep T.

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If you weren't deterred by the warning above, I hope you enjoy the story, for I know I enjoyed thinking it up.

Jukebox: "Missing (Studio Version)" by _Evanescence_ (links to ALL recommended songs are on my profile)

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Relativity

相対的な

Prologue:

Connected

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He strode alone by a wide, angry river, but he didn't hear its roar. He trudged underneath the pelting rays of the sun, but he didn't feel the heat. He traipsed through wafting fumes, but he didn't smell the stench of the mutilated corpses and macabre bits around him.

For years he had lived like this. Well, one couldn't truly describe his manner of being as living. He moved; he occasionally ate and slept; he existed, but he didn't live. Living had left him years ago.

His name was Uchiha Sasuke, and he had been an avenger all his life.

But now, there was no one left to avenge; he had killed them all—most of the world, actually. _Now_, he wasn't an avenger, and _now_ he had no reason to live. So he existed, wanting only another reason for his broken heart to keep on beating.

Sasuke ended the movement of his long legs and looked down to his hands, the hands he swore were red, the hands he had killed his brother, his best friend, his love, and his entire village with. Those long-fingered hands of his had eliminated everything. He thought it ironic how a nineteen-year-old man who had witnessed the death of his beloved family could make the mistake of personally slaughtering the only ones who had accepted and loved him, the only ones left who could bring life back into his veins. He didn't realize how much they meant to him until they were gone, until he had annihilated them. Now it was too late. Now he was forced to deal with the atrocities he had brought upon himself. He couldn't change anything; he just had to accept his fate as a bastard, a murderer, a destroyer of lands, and the cause of the most destructive Great Ninja War ever. He had to accept that he could do nothing to make amends (…or so he thought).

And so he threw himself headfirst into the rapids and torrents.

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Seiko had been strolling through the only peaceful place she knew of nowadays, a smaller branch of a huge river flowing near her humble cottage, when she found him. At first, she thought he was dead body floating downstream as a result of the conflicts up the river, but she hadn't ever seen one drift down so far as to reach her home. She carefully ventured down the riverbank and saw the corpse was actually a living, breathing, _beautiful_ young man. She edged closer to the water and saw his dark eyes were open, open and staring directly upward.

"Young man!" she called to him, her voice soft as the gentle breeze rustling the tall trees. "Young man, are you hurt?"

_Yes, _thought Sasuke,_ I am hurt._

He didn't look to her; he remained floating in the calm water, begging for a lethal waterfall to be just a few more feet down the river. His thoughts were interrupted when he heard a few splashes and eventually felt warm hands grasp his right arm.

"Young man!" Seiko said urgently as she witnessed the closing of his forlorn, murky eyes. Somehow, it hurt her; somehow, she was connected to him; somehow, she knew she couldn't let this man die. "_Young man_!"

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Sasuke dimly knew someone was moving him, taking him to some place, but he refused to open his eyes; he knew he could, but he would not give Fate the satisfaction. Eventually, however, his eyes couldn't open even if he wanted them to, and he fell unconscious.

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He had a concussion, a _bad _concussion. He was severely dehydrated. He was brutally undernourished; every bone in this body was visible through his wispy-looking skin. He was bruised and battered black and blue. His left femur was fractured, along with his left ulna. But above all, he was an _Uchiha_. No—he was _the _Uchiha.

Seiko lowered her head. This was him. This was _him. _She had saved the man who had started GNW IV. This was the man who had just about razed the entire world…because of her.

"Young man," she whispered, "I know you can hear me, so please do not pretend otherwise." She realized her frail fingers were fidgeting with his dried yukata, the one item she had identified him with, and she stopped immediately. She sighed. "Why were you floating down the river? What happened to you?" She decided not to mention her knowledge of his identity and of what he had done.

Sasuke felt better _physically _than he had in years. His skin wasn't crusted over with dirt and blood; he had a few hours of sleep in him; he was covered in a warm blanket; he was in a house of someone—no, a _home _of someone. The bodily pain was mostly gone, but the _other _pain was far from it. "I wanted to drown." His deep voice was quiet as he spoke.

"And why did you want to drown?" Seiko questioned in her wise and restful tone.

She wasn't at all surprised by his answer, not with all she knew about him. She smiled as she heard her teakettle begin to sputter and sing, for she was doing the same thing he had tried to do. She had been doing it for years but to no avail: Seiko lived in a house that had been abandoned by another trying to escape the descent of the war; Seiko lived in this house because she wanted the war she had caused to consume her, to kill her. As of yet, it had not, but, eventually, she knew it would. So she stayed. So she waited.

There were two rooms in her tiny hut, a small bathroom and another room that was combined into a kitchen and bedroom, so Seiko had only a few steps to take in order to reach her teakettle. She poured the steaming water into two cups and inhaled the scent the brewing tea exuded. Seiko placed the cups, two simple bowls of rice, and two sets of chopsticks on a tray and strode to her futon, where the motionless murderer continued to rest.

"Are you going to answer me, Uchiha-san?" Seiko's voice was an ancient one.

"So you know who I am, then? You must not have seen my clan symbol when you dragged me from the water." His demeanor did not change in the slightest as he spoke his dismal piece.

She noticed his choice of words and understood. _Yes, I know _exactly_ who you are. _She knelt before him on a cushion. _And once, you knew exactly who _I _was._ "I would appreciate it if you would look at my face, not the ceiling, when I am speaking to you, Uchiha-san."

Sasuke slowly rotated his head to face her. He was taken aback by her appearance, but he gave away nothing. She was younger than her voice made her seem. Her eyes were the color of storm clouds. Her hair was dark, like his, and pulled back into a loose bun, long strands of black falling in her face. Her facial structure was beautiful. Her nose was slender and long. Her cheekbones were high and somewhat hollow. Her eyes were deep-set and a touch too big. Her body was petite and short; she was, though, womanly in her figure. She was somehow both plain _and_ lovely.

"Now you will answer my question." Seiko set the tray down on the floor and took a lingering sip from her tea. "Mhmmm…" she murmured with a faint smile tugging at her thin, lightly aged lips, forming a few delicate creases in her pale skin.

"You know who I am, so you know why," he said with no emotion whatsoever. "Look around you. The rivers of blood, the world in anguish—I am to blame for all of it. You know this…"

"Ah, but you are wrong, Uchiha-san. My knowledge of you is limited. I know you, another of your kind, and a man who called himself 'God' led the Sound and the forces of Akatsuki against the Leaf and, therefore, instigated the most recent and caustic of the Great Ninja Wars. But I don't know how."

"You know more than you are telling me." His eyes narrowed slightly as his frigid stare focused on hers; he was trying to pick apart those enigmatic, aged eyes of hers, for they were frustrating him…

"Ah, very perceptive of you, Uchiha-san." She drummed her fingers against her cup. "Oh! How rude of me. Forgive me, Uchiha-san, but I forgot to give you your tea. I'll prop some pillows behind you so you can sit up." She moved with a surprising grace and agility as she lifted his limp shoulders and bolstered his upper body up with a few cushions, carefully supporting his bandaged arm.

"Tell me what it is you really know about me."

She returned to her kneeling position and sighed. "Tell me your first name, and I shall." She knew already, but she needed conformation; she knew his name without a doubt because she knew far more of him than he would have liked.

"Sasuke."

"I see," she spoke almost sadly. "Sasuke-san, may I ask you a question before answering you?"

Sasuke sat reclined and made no change in himself whatsoever.

"Do you think you could hate me?" she said in an undertone as she gripped her teacup slightly tighter.

His steely eyes narrowed again. What sort of question was that?

"Never mind that." She smiled at him. "Are you going to drink your tea? It's very good."

His previously controlled tone slipped into an almost hiss as he spoke, "Tell me."

"I wonder, Sasuke-san," her voice was thoughtful again, "if you will hate me, as I hated you and your kind all those years ago, when I tell you just how we are connected. I wonder if you will kill me, actually."

Her words had ricocheted off his mind for a moment as he had an epiphany. "I know you from somewhere," Sasuke stated, a faint appearance of awe spreading across his face. "I _know_ _you_ from somewhere." He had seen her somewhere before. He knew he had. Now, more than ever, he _needed _to know what this woman knew. _Where have I seen her before? When? Just who is she? _For years he hadn't needed to think at all, just wander through the shards of the world he had broken, but now he had a reason to do more than breathe. It was something about her…

"Ah, yes, Uchiha-san, you would indeed know me from somewhere, sometime," she said musingly with a slightly wistful look in her grey eyes. "Explaining this will take time, and you may not believe me at first, but you will once I finish. Will you promise to listen until I've finished?"

Sasuke nodded, but added in a nearly incredulous voice, "I don't like you." He hadn't taken the time to dislike or like anyone in _years_; he hadn't taken the time to _notice _someone in years.

Neither had she. "I don't like you either," she said easily. "I'll tell you why you don't like me; I'll tell you why you should hate me, why you _will_." She lowered her head, sighed, and then looked him in the eyes; hers were misty; his were cold. "I came from a different time, you see. The time I came from was a horrifying place: the world was at war, as it is now; innocent people were dying all the days, as they are now; entire villages were removed from the face of the earth, as they are now. But everything was _so_ much worse than now! Imagine that! A time worse than the present! I promise you, Sasuke-san, my time was worse. Shall I tell you about it?"

Sasuke tilted his tea to his lips and nodded warily. This woman was off her rocker… Why else would she be claiming to have somehow come from a different time?

"You see, in my time, your clan had succeeded with its rebellion against Konoha, and the rebellion was the spark of a worldwide inferno of war and chaos."

Sasuke ceased his movements; he didn't breath; he didn't blink. How did she know this? How _could_ she know this? These were secrets only people long since dead and himself could know! He eyed her cagily.

"I was raised to hate your kind, to despise the Uchiha people because of the war your uprising had caused. I was born in Konoha, but, before your clan's violence reached me, I was relocated to the Wave Country, for my great-grandmother was an Elder and had that power. Once there, however, I became an orphan. I was told my entire family was killed by an Uchiha army while defending my home, and so I loathed you. You would understand that, wouldn't you? Hatred, you know, is a spectacularly powerful thing. I used my hatred to push myself harder than anyone else, and it served its purpose well. I discovered I had special talents, you see, so I was placed in a special unit in the Wave Country's Anbu at the age of ten.

"I had no guardians, nobody at all to notice where I was or care for me, so I poured myself into my work; I had no friends, but I didn't particularly care, anyways, because I was too focused. I didn't eat or sleep often; I only cared about exacting revenge on the murderers of my parents, so I worked. My work, you see, was that of time. I have the ability to manipulate it to an extent—time, that is. The Wave was in danger of becoming another country wiped off the earth, so it was my job to stop it…by stopping the cause of it all—stopping the war, I mean. So I developed a jutsu that could.

"And this is where you will understand why you should hate me, Sasuke-san; this is where you will understand just how intimately we are connected." Seiko sighed, glanced down to her pale hands, and then looked to Sasuke. "Recalling this is excruciating for me. Can you tell?"

Sasuke gave a quick nod of his head. It was painful for him, too, but he couldn't understand why. And she wasn't even making sense! She was leaving out so many details, so much left to doubt! But he believed her, and it scared him.

Seiko grinned knowingly. "You haven't spoken so long with someone in years, have you?"

Again, he nodded.

"I'll continue, then." She paused to drink her tea. "The Wave managed to stay on rocky but sufficient ground with the surrounding countries for a few more years until I had perfected my technique; I was thirteen at the time. So young, so young! You understand what it's like to have no childhood and to not even understand what you've been deprived of because of blinding rage. Anyways, the Wave had included other countries in on its plans to send me back in time, so it was a rather large affair, as you can imagine. I thought I was lucky! I was treated like a hero in my home; people smiled and congratulated me, and I was so used to them shaking their heads to me sorrowfully! I—oh, I'm rambling. My apologies." She paused ponderingly. "How old do I look, Sasuke-san?"

"Forty."

"You're generous, Sasuke-san. I am fifty-five."

He nodded his head blandly. She shook hers desolately. Seiko was prepared for his hatred; it was justified, after all.

She inhaled deeply, readying herself for his loathing. "It is because of me that your older brother, Uchiha Itachi, was ordered to kill off your clan. It is because of me that the world is in shambles. It is because of me that you started this war with the world."

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Well, I certainly threw a lot at you; I apologize for that. I swear, however, all of the nonsense that has yet to be explained will be. There is an in-depth back-story that will I will continue to reveal throughout.

Also, my character Seiko and Sasuke will have a strictly platonic relationship. I just wanted to clear that up right away. This is a SasuSaku fanfic.

**I hope you'll take the time to review! Feedback of any kind is greatly appreciated!**

XOXO

Endoh


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